Ohio prosecutors using new life without parole option

June 23, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

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With BC-OH--Life Over Death-Glance

AP Photo

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

Associated Press Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — On the surface, Laqwan Scandrick seemed a perfect candidate for a charge carrying the possibility of a death sentence.

Prosecutors said Scandrick shot a man to death during a robbery in Springfield in 2006. Under Ohio law, committing a homicide during an aggravated robbery is one of several elements allowing the state to seek capital punishment.

Clark County Prosecutor Stephen Schumaker, however, took advantage of a new law that allows prosecutors to seek the second-toughest punishment available for aggravated murders — life with no chance of parole — without first seeking a death sentence. Previously, the sentence was an option only for jurors weighing an alternative to a death sentence.

Prosecutors around Ohio, citing the ability to pursue harsh punishment without going through the complication and expense of a death penalty case, are starting to take advantage of the 2005 law, according to a review of state records by The Associated Press.

The number of death penalty indictments sought statewide dropped 32 percent from 2004 to 2007, according to figures compiled by the Ohio Public Defender’s Office.

Meanwhile, the number of life without parole sentences rose by more than two-thirds in the three years since the law took effect compared with the three years before, when 45 inmates entered prison with the permanent life sentence, according to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Ten offenders have received the sentence so far this year.

“Life without parole means it’s over,” said Clermont County Prosecutor Don White. “The only way they’ll get out is in a pine box or if the governor lets them out.”

White used the new law last year in a plea deal that sent double murderer Brian Adams to prison for life without resorting to a death penalty indictment first.

Judge Douglas Rastatter of Clark County Common Pleas Court gave Scandrick the life sentence without parole.

“I have no reason to have any mercy on you whatsoever,” the judge said at sentencing.

North Carolina enacted a similar law in 2001. But Texas, which often executes more offenders in a year than all other states combined, only recently allowed life without parole as an alternate sentence in death penalty cases. The state does not permit it in non-death penalty cases.

In Delaware County in north-central Ohio, Prosecutor David Yost used the state’s new option when charging two men in April in the eight-year-old stabbing death of a Delaware businessman.

The move allows Yost to try William Allen and James Brenson Jr. together to avoid holding two long and potentially complex and costly trials back-to-back. Joint death penalty trials are rare because of the cases’ complexity.

“We can assure the family that if a jury convicts, that sentencing option is available to the judge,” Yost said, referring to life without parole.

In Franklin County, where the number of death penalty cases has plunged, the law is one of several factors that Prosecutor Ron O’Brien considers in a new approach to capital punishment.

From two dozen or more indictments a year for the past decade — including 34 in 2004, highest in the state that year — the number of death penalty cases in the county dropped to five in 2006 and three last year.

“We want to try to focus on those cases that are the worst of the worst homicide defendants that are death penalty eligible, and cases where we believe a jury will return a death verdict,” O’Brien said.

The new law is attractive to prosecutors because of the cost of capital punishment trials and because juries increasingly prefer life without parole as a death penalty option, said State Public Defender Tim Young.

A death penalty trial can easily top $100,000 for a county as extra staff, investigators and psychological experts are hired by the defense and prosecutors. It’s not inexpensive for a large county but can drain the annual budgets of smaller counties without help from the state.

“If you can come to a life without parole option without having to go through that cost and it satisfies the public’s need for safety and punishment, then that makes a real reasonable outcome for everyone involved,” Young said.

Schumaker said the Scandrick case fit the requirements for bringing a death penalty case but had problems that would have made it difficult for a jury to choose a death sentence. He wouldn’t elaborate.

Not all prosecutors are changing their ways. Hamilton County, which accounts for one in every five of the state’s approximately 180 death row inmates, hasn’t altered its approach. Nor has Cuyahoga County, which indicted 31 capital cases last year, tied for the county’s highest total in the past eight years.

“If a defendant is eligible for the death penalty, the defendant is charged with the death penalty,” said Ryan Miday, a spokesman for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason.

The North Carolina law gives prosecutors the option of seeking life without parole in first-degree murder cases. Previously, all first-degree murder charges automatically carried the possibility of a death sentence.

The state can’t say yet what the law’s effect is on death penalty cases. But the number of death sentences there has dropped from 14 in 2001 to three in 2007.

Colon Willoughby, prosecutor in Wake County, which includes Raleigh, said the new option allows for speedier justice that saves money and protects citizens.

“Under the old law, I think prosecutors were sometimes forced to try cases capitally in order to be able to get a life sentence, knowing that there was very little chance a jury would render a sentence of death,” said Willoughby, a prosecutor for more than two decades.

No national data exists for the number of death penalty cases brought each year. Last year, the number of inmates sentenced to death across the country hit its lowest mark — about 110 — since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Ohio had five death sentences in 2005, two in 2006 and four last year.

The change in Ohio law was inspired by the 2000 killing of a 15-year-old boy in Milford in Clermont County whose killer pleaded guilty to avoid a death sentence and is now serving a sentence of 50 years to life with a chance of parole. The boy’s mother pushed for the change to allow the stiffer non-death sentence.

“It gives you more discretion in your charging decisions,” Clark County’s Schumaker said. “If the death penalty is not appropriate in a case, it’s a way to deal with it and not have it on the table early on.”

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On the Net:

Clark County prosecutor: http://www.clarkcountyohio.gov/courts/prosecutor/index.htm

Ohio State Public Defender: http://opd.ohio.gov/index.htm